REFORM MOVEMENTS OF THE 1800S

1. REFORM MOVEMENTS OF THE 1800S

2. What were the major reform movements of the 1800s? • Treatment of the mentally ill • Temperance movement • Abolition of slavery • Women’s rights • Education

3. TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL Leader: Dorothea Dix GOAL: better treatment of persons with mental illnesses REASON: the mentally ill were badly treated

4. TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL • In 1800s, America was seen as a land of unlimited opportunity. Many believed that those who failed did so because they had bad character • As a result, debtors, children who were offenders, and the mentally ill were often locked up in jails • Dorothea Dix and other reformers worked to change Americans’ ways of thinking about these institutions and their inmates

5. TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL • Dorothea Dix first observed prison conditions while teaching Sunday school at a Boston prison for women in 1841. • She wanted to find out if all the prisons in the state were as appalling. • Over a two-year period, Dix investigated more than 800 prisons, jails, and poorhouses.

6. TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL • She found the prisoners were often living in inhumane conditions. • Prisoners were often chained to the walls with little or no clothing, often in unheated cells.

7. TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL • To Dorothea Dix’s horror, she learned that some of the inmates were guilty of no crime—they were mentally ill persons. • Dix made it her life’s work to educate the public as to the poor conditions for both the mentally ill and prisoners. Dorothea Dix Hospital, Raleigh, NC

8. TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL • Dix decided to appeal to the Massachusetts government for help. • In 1843 she addressed the following report to the state legislature: “I proceed, gentlemen, to call your attention to the present state of Insane Persons confined…, in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience…”

9. TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL • As a result of Dix’s report, Massachusetts passed a law to build mental hospitals where mental illness could be treated as a disease rather than a crime. • By 1852, she had persuaded 11 states to open hospitals for persons with mental illness.

10. TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT • Leader: American Temperance Union and religious leaders GOAL: to eliminate alcohol abuse REASON: alcohol led to crime, poverty, abuse of family

11. TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT • Religious leaders stood at the forefront of the war against alcohol. • Public drunkenness was common in the early 1800s. • Alcohol abuse was widespread, especially in the West and among urban workers.

12. TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT • Reformers blamed alcohol for: • poverty • breakup of families • Wife and child abuse • crime • Insanity

13. TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT • Alcohol abuse was widespread during this time. • Employers often paid part of workers’ wages in rum or whiskey. • Workers took rum breaks similar to today’s coffee breaks

14. TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT • The American Temperance Society was formed in 1826. • Within a few years, about 1000 local organizations sprang up across the nation. • Some groups took a moderate approach and asked people to drink less alcohol. • Other groups insisted that the sale of alcohol be banned altogether

15. TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT • Northern and Southern temperance societies used propaganda to win support for their cause. • They held meetings, gave speeches, and distributed pamphlets. • They even sang songs such as “Drink Nothing, Boys, but Water,” and “Father, Bring Home Your Money Tonight.”

16. TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT • State legislators took the reformers’ message to heart. By 1857 several states had passed prohibition laws. • Many Americans protested the laws, and most of the laws were later repealed.

17. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY • Leaders: Quakers, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, anti-slavery groups REASON: it is immoral for one person to own another GOAL: end slavery

19. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY • By 1804 every Northern state legislature had passed laws to eliminate it. • In1840, nearly 2.5 million enslaved people lived in the South. • The Southern economy, though, depended on slave labor.

20. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY • A religious group, the Quakers, started the abolition movement after the Revolutionary War • Quakers had opposed slavery since colonial times. In 1775 the Quakers organized the first antislavery society.

21. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY • The American Colonization Society, founded in 1817, wanted to help free African Americans. • The society set up a colony for free African Americans in Liberia, in western Africa. • It was not successful because many African Americans wished to remain in the United States, their home.

22. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY • In 1831 white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison founded The Liberator, a Boston anti-slavery newspaper. • In the first issue, Garrison demanded the immediate emancipation, or freeing, of all enslaved persons. • He urged abolitionists to take action without delay.

23. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY • The North had many prominent African American abolitionists. • Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in New York and gained her freedom when New York abolished slavery. • Now free, she vowed to tell the world about the cruelty of slavery.

24. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY • The most important spokesperson for the cause was Frederick Douglass. • Born into slavery, Douglass taught himself to read, although Southern laws prohibited it. • He escaped from slavery in 1838 and settled in Massachusetts. • He captivated audiences by talking about his life in bondage and spoke against the injustices faced by free African Americans.

25. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY • In addition to his public speaking, Douglass edited a widely read abolitionist journal called the North Star. • Douglass’s speaking and writing abilities so impressed audiences that opponents refused to believe he had been a slave • In response, he wrote three autobiographies.

26. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY • Many abolitionists became “conductors” on the Underground Railroad. • The Underground Railroad began around 1817. • It was a series of houses where people hid runaway slaves and helped them reach the next “station.” • Enslaved African Americans made their way to the North or Canada on the railroad.

27. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY • Born a slave, Harriet Tubman escaped then went back to help others escape. • She returned to the South 19 times and led more than 300 enslaved people—including her own parents—to freedom. • Slaveholders offered a reward of $40,000 for her, dead or alive.

28. Women’s Rights Leaders: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth GOAL: obtain equal rights for women, including suffrage, right to own property, and education REASON: women did not have the same rights as men

29. Women’s Rights • Their involvement in the antislavery movement and other reform movements gave women roles outside their homes and families. • They learned valuable skills, such as organizing, working together, and speaking public. (it was considered “unfeminine” to speak in public)

30. Women’s Rights • After attending the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840 and not being allowed to participate in the discussions, Lucretia Coffin Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton spent hours talking about women’s position in society. • They realized that they could not bring about social change if they themselves lacked social and political rights.

31. Women’s Rights • In July1848, the first women’s rights convention opened in Seneca Falls, New York. • Both males and females attended the convention. • The delegates issued the Seneca Falls Declaration that “all men and women are created equal.” • Then the declaration listed several resolutions, including suffrage

32. Women’s Rights • A dedicated reformer, Susan B. Anthony joined the woman’s rights movement, the temperance movement, and worked for the American Anti-Slavery Society. • She became one of the first to urge full participation of African Americans in the women’s suffrage movement. • Through her efforts, New York agreed to grant married women the guardianship of their children and control of their own wages.

33. Education Reform Leaders: Horace Mann REASON: more Americans were qualified to vote and needed to be able to make wise decisions about their government GOALS: to educate all Americans “Education does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich; it prevents them from being poor.”

34. Education Reform • American schools varied across the country. • They were usually paid for by the town • The rich managed to give their children better educations by paying for private schools.

35. Education Reform • During the 1830s more Americans qualified to vote than ever before. • Educational reformers argued that voters needed good educations to make sound decisions about their government. • The reformers proposed raising the standards of schools across the nation and supporting them with taxes. • To accomplish these goals, they started the common school movement.

36. Education Reform • Not everyone favored common schools, also referred to as free, or tax-supported, public schools. • In the 1830s, few people paid state or federal taxes. As a result, many strongly objected to paying taxes for public schools.

37. Education Reform • Horace Mann spearheaded the campaign for common schools. • Mann was especially concerned about poor children who could not afford private schools or to contribute to the support of schools in their district. • Mann won over taxpayers to his way of thinking by pointing out the benefits to society.

38. Education Reform • During the 1840s and 1850s, the flood of immigrants into the United States helped free public schools gain general acceptance. • Many Americans realized that schools were the ideal agents to teach American values to the new arrivals.